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Modernising discourses of intellectual disability have brought innovative social technologies that promote participation and freedom for people so labelled. This thesis argues there is a key experiential contradiction between these discourses as operationalised in neo-liberalism and the ways that people with intellectual disability embrace self-advocacy and become political actors in their own right. Through its inherently moral claims, self-advocacy supports the experiential voice of the 'other' and reveals itself as a sustaining and enduring pillar in the struggle against human injustice and inequity. These other discourses, in contrast, intensify individualisation, ignore power relations and depoliticise self-advocacy as a politics of resistance. The first part of the thesis critically examines the emergence of intellectual disability as a dimension of human difference and examines how forms of knowledge shape social and policy responses to such people. The second part presents a collaborative action research methodology and a reflective study which challenges the bio-medical, positivist and psycho-reductionist styles of research that have objectified people with intellectual disability. Using this methodology, the voices and experiences of two groups of self-advocates, one in England and the other in Australia are interpreted. Contemporary professional and other governmental interventions demand individual competencies in the pursuit of self-determination. These discourses of empowerment and citizenship are in constant tension with historically conditioned structures which shape the material and social lives of people with intellectual disability. The thesis finds similarities in the ways that self-advocates and their allies interpret these political realities and work within, across and beyond their contradictory trajectories of constraint and freedom. The study suggests that self-advocacy is a complex and sophisticated practice aimed at recognition of the unique lived experience of intellectual disability ...

There is a growing body of research in Australia and internationally focused on 'care-criminalisation': the criminal justice system involvement of young people in out-of-home care. Residential care – a model of out-of-home care where groups of children and young people live with paid staff – has been identified as a specific site of criminalisation for those who live there, in particular young people with cognitive disability and complex support needs. This raises significant human rights concerns and the need for greater systemic scrutiny. This article aims to make a contribution by focusing specifically on the institutional arrangements and characterisations that criminalise young people with cognitive disability in residential care through interrogating the official administrative records of two young people with cognitive disability who spent time in residential care and had contact with the criminal justice system as teenagers. Analysing case studies compiled from these records illustrates the ways that criminal justice intervention becomes justified and normalised for young people with cognitive disability in residential care. We critique the ways that institutional mechanisms and narratives serve to construct, coerce and constrain young people with cognitive disability in residential care. The specific forms of surveillance and control they are subjected to mean that their designation of 'at risk' almost routinely transmutes to 'a risk' to others, to themselves and to property and in the process their vulnerability and need for care and protection becomes instead a mechanism of criminalisation. Often disability becomes erased or at least overshadowed in administrative records, with care-specific and disability-related behaviour reinscribed as offending behaviour. Particularly stark in this analysis is the institutional and interpersonal violence that accompanies such criminalisation and the pervasive nature of this violence in the lives of young people with cognitive disability in residential care settings: violence they are subjected to by those responsible for their care and safety and violence as their response to the regulation of their circumstances – against property and staff and towards themselves.

AbstractThere are multiple structural and practical barriers to Aboriginal young people with cognitive disability in remote areas receiving the support and services they need. Multidisciplinary mixed-methods research over the past decade has provided evidence of the ways that many such young people end up with complex support needs and being 'managed' by police and justice agencies in the absence of appropriate early intervention, transition support and community-based options. This article presents and synthesises knowledge generated by this body of work and contextualises it within the experiences and trajectory of a young Aboriginal woman with cognitive disability and complex support needs from a remote town. This case study is drawn from a New South Wales linked administrative dataset containing data from health, housing, disability, human services, police, legal, court and justice agencies on a cohort of people who have been incarcerated. The article draws out key principles and strategies to suggest what a community-led, holistic service response could have looked like for Casey.

This paper queries the absence of disabled voices in contemporary citizenship literature. It argues that the language and imagery of the citizen is imbued with hegemonic normalcy and as such excludes disability. Feminist perspectives, such as those which argue for a form of maternal citizenship, largely fail to acknowledge disability experiences. Exclusionary practices are charted and links are made between gender, race and disability in this process. A citizenship which acknowledges disability is fundamental to re-imaging local, national and international collectivities.

This paper explores the signification of evidence-based policy as a new policy-making paradigm in Australia through a cross-case comparison of the role of evidence in two key areas: child protection and illicit drug policy. Although evidence makes certain courses of action appear valid and credible, quality evidence is not necessarily the critical factor in driving or explaining policy outcomes. Policy solutions are perceived more favourably and driven forward when the initial problem is viewed by actors through a common frame. Rather than a policy input or driver, evidence operates as a discursive tool for consolidation of particular frames and problem representations.

AbstractDespite an increased focus in recent years on Aboriginal people with disability within disability studies and advocacy, limited attention has been paid to Aboriginal people in Australian disability services policy. This article examines the consultation with Aboriginal organisations for the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), a new disability policy personalising care through individual service funding packages. The article interrogates how, and to what extent, the government has sought and incorporated the views of Aboriginal people with disability into NDIS policy. Using thematic content analysis, governmental NDIS‐related documents are compared with Aboriginal organisation submissions and public hearing transcripts, to identify tensions in perspectives regarding Aboriginal peoples' participation in the NDIS. The article concludes that governmental responsiveness to Aboriginal organisations in the NDIS operates from predetermined constructions of Aboriginality and disability.